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With the 2025 hurricane season underway in the eastern Pacific, Hurricane Erick is picking up speed as it heads toward southern Mexico, strengthening to a Category 2 hurricane on Wednesday afternoon, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center. Erick is currently located in the eastern Pacific Ocean, about 105 miles south of Puerto Ángel. NOAA’s National Hurricane Center forecast that Erick would rapidly intensify, strengthen throughout Wednesday, and reach “major hurricane strength” Wednesday night or early Thursday as it approaches the coast of southern Mexico. The storm is expected to bring damaging winds and “life-threatening flash floods,” with 8 to 16 inches of rain (20 inches maximum), across the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero, which could lead to mudslides. It could also bring 2 to 4 inches (6 inches maximum) across Chiapas, Michoacán, Colima, Jalisco, and Mexico Cityand to Guatemala. Erick is expected to move inland or be near the coast on Thursday, prompting a hurricane warning from Acapulco to Puerto Ángel and a hurricane watch for west of Acapulco to Tecpán de Galeana. The storm will produce heavy rainfall across portions of Central America and southwest Mexico throughout the week, and a dangerous storm surge is expected to produce coastal flooding. How to track Hurricane Erick’s path in real time Erick, the fifth named storm for the current eastern Pacific hurricane season, is currently traveling northeast with sustained winds of about 85 mph (100 mph maximum), with higher gusts and hurricane-force winds extending 15 miles out from its center. It is expected to turn northwest later on Wednesday. Hurricanes can change paths quickly, which is why tracking the storm is so important. For updated information, advisories, and maps showing projected and traveled paths, check out these resources below: Esris Hurricane Aware National Hurricane Center
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E-Commerce
A major new study published in Nature examines how rising temperatures will impact global food systems, and the results offer a dire warning for wealthy countries. As the planet warms, the environments that grow the most-consumed crops around the globe are changing, but theres been a lot of disagreement about what those changes will look like. Counter to some more optimistic previous findings, the new study finds that every degree Celsius that the planet warms could result in 120 calories worth of food production lost per person, per day. The new analysis is the result of almost a decade of work by the Climate Impact Lab, a consortium of climate, agriculture and policy experts. The research brings together data from more than 12,000 regions in 55 countries, with a focus on wheat, corn, soybeans, rice, barley and cassava the core crops that account for two-thirds of calories consumed globally. When global production falls, consumers are hurt because prices go up and it gets harder to access food and feed our families, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability Professor Solomon Hsiang, a senior author on the study, said in an announcement paired with the new paper. If the climate warms by 3 degrees, thats basically like everyone on the planet giving up breakfast. Adaptation wont offset farming losses Some previous research has hinted that global food production could actually go up in a warming planet by lengthening growing seasons and widening the viable regions where some crops can grow. In Western American states like Washington and California, growing seasons are already substantially longer than they once were, adding an average of 2.2 days per decade since 1895. The new study criticizes previous research for failing to realistically estimate how farmers will adapt to a changing climate. While prior studies rely on an all-or-nothing model for agricultural climate adaptation where farmers either adapted flawlessly or didnt adapt at all, the new paper in Nature systematically measure[s] how much farmers adjust to changing conditions, a first according to the research group. That analysis found that farmers who do adapt by switching to new crops or changing long-standing planting and harvesting practices could lessen a third of climate-caused losses in crop yields by 2100. But even in a best-case scenario of climate adaptation, food production is on track to take a major hit. Any level of warming, even when accounting for adaptation, results in global output losses from agriculture, lead author and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Assistant Professor of agricultural and consumer economics Andrew Hultgren said. The richest countries have the most to lose While wealthy countries are insulated from some of the deadliest ravages of the climate crisis, the new analysis reveals a U.S. food supply that is particularly vulnerable. Researchers found that the modern breadbaskets that havent yet explored climate adaptations will fare worse than parts of the world where extreme heat and changing weather has already forced farmers to adapt. Places in the Midwest that are really well suited for present day corn and soybean production just get hammered under a high warming future, Hultgren said. You do start to wonder if the Corn Belt is going to be the Corn Belt in the future. In a high-emissions model of the future where humans fail to meaningfully slow the march of global warming, corn production would dive by 40% in the U.S. grain belt, with soybeans suffering an even worse 50% decline. Wheat production would decline 30 to 40% in the same scenario. Because such a large fraction of agricultural production is concentrated in these wealthy-but-low-adaption regions, they dominate projections of global calorie production, generating much of the global food security risk we document, the authors wrote, adding that farming in the U.S. is optimized for high average yields in current climate conditions but is not robust enough to withstand a changing climate. This is basically like sending our agricultural profits overseas. We will be sending benefits to producers in Canada, Russia, China. Those are the winners, and we in the U.S. are the losers, Hsiang said. The longer we wait to reduce emissions, the more money we lose.
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E-Commerce
Amazon is gearing up to make as many as 10,000 robotaxis annually at a sprawling plant near Silicon Valley as it prepares to challenge self-driving cab leader Waymo. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is also vying to join the autonomous race. The 220,000-square-foot (20,440-square-meters) robotaxi factory announced Wednesday heralds a new phase in Amazon’s push into a technological frontier that began taking shape in 2009, when Waymo was launched as a secret project within Google. Amazon began eyeing the market five years ago when it shelled out $1.2 billion for self-driving startup Zoox, which will be the brand behind a robotaxi service that plans to begin transporting customers in Las Vegas late this year before expanding into San Francisco next year. Zoox, conceived in 2014, will be trying to catch up to Waymo, which began operating robotaxis in Phoenix nearly five years ago then charging for rides in San Francisco in 2023 before expanding into Los Angeles and Austin, Texas. Waymo says it has already more than 10 million paid rides while other would-be rivals such as Amazon and Tesla are still fine-tuning their self-driving technology while tackling other challenges, such how to ramp up their fleet. Amazon feels like it has addressed that issue with Zoox’s manufacturing plant that spans across the equivalent of three-and-a-half football fields located in Hayward, California about 17 miles (27 kilometers) north of a factory where Tesla makes some of the electric vehicles that Musk believes will eventually be able to operate without a driver behind the wheel. Since moving into the former bus manufacturing factory in 2023, Zoox has transformed it into a high-tech facility where its boxy, gondola-like vehicles are put together and tested along a 21-station assembly line. For now, Zoox is only making one robotaxi per day, but by next year hopes to be churning them out at the rate of three vehicles per hour. By 2027, Zoox hopes to make 10,000 robotaxis annually in Hayward for a fleet that it hopes to take into other major markets, including Miami, Los Angeles and Atlanta. Although Zoox will be assembling its robotaxis in the U.S., about half of the parts are imported from outside the country, according to company officials. Waymo is also planning to expand into Atlanta and Miami and on Wednesday took the first step toward bringing its robotaxis in the most populous U.S. city with the disclosure of an application to begin testing its vehicles in New York. It’s an exciting time to be heading on this journey, Zoox CEO Aicha Evans said during a Tuesday tour of the robotaxi factory that she co-hosted with Jesse Levinson, the company’s co-founder and chief technology officer. Although Zoox will be lagging well behind, it believes it can lure passengers with vehicles that look more like carriages than cars with seating for up to four passengers. Waymo, in contrast, builds its self-driving technology on to cars made by other major automakers, making its robotaxi look similar to vehicles steered by humans. Zoox isn’t even bothering to put a steering wheel in its robotaxis. As it continues to test its robotaxis in Las Vegas, Zoox recently struck a partnership to give rides to guests of Resorts World. It’s also still testing its robotaxis in San Francisco, where Waymo already has turned driverless cars into an everyday site in a city that has been renowned for cable cars since the 1870s. While testing in San Francisco last month, a minor collision between a Zoox robotaxi and a person riding an electric scooter last month prompted the company to issue a voluntary recall to update its self-driving technology. No injuries were reported in the incident. Tesla is still angling to compete against Waymo too, although it remains unclear when Musk will fulfill his long-running promise to build the world’s largest robotaxi service. Musk still hasn’t given up on the goal, though his current ambitions are more modest than they were in 2019. when he predicted Tesla would be running a fleet of 1 million robotaxis by now. He is currently aiming for a limited rollout of Tesla robotaxis in Austin this Sunday, although that date could change because Musk is being super paranoid about safety. Zoox, in contrast, is planning to operate 500 to 1,000 of its robotaxis in small to medium-sized markets and about 2,000 robotaxis in major cities where it eventually operates, according to Evans. The company thinks each robotaxi produced in its Hayward plan should be on the road for about five years, or about 500,000 miles. Michael Liedtke, AP technology writer
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